


patchwork, pieces missing

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2017 [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Buffy makes a good mom, Child Abuse - mentioned, Community: wishlist_fic, Emotional Hormonal Irrational Woman, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff, Found Family, Happy Ending, Immortal Buffy, Loki's Children and Related Angst, Marriage, Misunderstandings, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Not Beta Read, Odin's A+Parenting, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Child Abuse, Pregnancy, Prompt Fic, Sequel, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Step-parents, The Norns - Freeform, Women Being Awesome, odin's A+ grandparenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 22:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: Buffy is pregnant, emotional and short one husband and not panicking. Not at all. That would be ridiculous.(She'll still kill him when he shows back up, though.)





	patchwork, pieces missing

**Author's Note:**

> For naarano, who asked for a sequel in the (Not Exactly) Waking Up In Vegas verse. - Pregnant Buffy. Yay!
> 
> This was. so. much. fun. Thank you!

+

You know that thing pregnant women do where they realize they are bringing new life into this world and freak the hell out?

Yeah, Buffy, six months pregnant, the size of a whale with _half alien twin babies_ inside of her, is doing that. 

Right now. 

There’s babies inside her. Multiple babies. Half-Jotun ones, which isn’t really an issue, except what if they end up with some kind of genetic disease thanks to being bi-species? What if they’re unhealthy because she’s way, way, way too old to have kids, or because she gets into fights a lot and dies a lot and Loki magics at her a lot and they travel between worlds and one of their best friends is a mad genius who regularly plays with, like, time/space and radioactivity in the basement of the giant-ass tower they live in, in the middle of New York, which is, in and of itself, probably a bad thing, because Buffy never noticed before she lived in Asgard for centuries, but America is really, really dirty. 

What if something goes wrong with the birth? What if she’s a terrible mother? She’ll be a terrible mother. What if Norse myth holds true and the babies inside of her are Vali and Nari? Loki had all his other kids in the right order and everything and their fates – what if Odin tries to take them away? What if – 

But that’s not the point. The point is that she’s freaking out. She’s freaking out and Loki is supposed to talk her down. He’s supposed to humor her and calm her down and bring her deep-fried pickles, goddamn, because what is the point of having a husband who can teleport if not to satisfy your exotic and weird food cravings?

Instead he’s gone. Disappeared. Gone bye-bye. Under the radar, off the map, here there be dragons, only not, because Buffy slays dragons who kidnap her husband and there are no dragons this time. She knows. She checked. 

There’s only Loki, except not, because he’s not here. 

“Are you freaking kidding me?” she asks, hip-checking Tony in the shoulder to get him to vacate the swivel chair he’s sitting in. Wisely, he scoots, making room for her to sit her fat ass down and stare at the holoscreen JARVIS is nicely displaying on the table. 

“He’s not there, Princess,” he tells her, apologetic, a hand on her shoulder. She slaps his hand away, grabs it back, squeezes, possibly too tightly. 

“No. He’s gotta be somewhere. He always leaves a trace for me to follow,” she tells him, staring at the CCTV footage from around the tower. Nothing. Not even with JARVIS’ magic filters applied. 

“Buff-,” Tony starts, but she cuts him off. 

“No, you don’t get it, Tony. He sneaks away. He runs off. He goes on wild goose chases or just disappears into some random, ancient archive for half a year, but he always, always leaves a damn note on the fridge for me.” She spins the chair to stare at him, eyes hard. “I’ve been married to the man a century, Tony. He doesn’t _disappear_.”

“Well,” the mad inventor snaps, waving his hands at her. “He did this time!”

“Find me Thor,” she orders, turns back to stare at the footage. JARVIS is smart enough to loop it for her crazy ass. She knows she’s not being rational right now, okay? She’s aware.

She pats her belly, feels one of the beans kick back in greeting and tries to reel in the insanity. 

“Sorry,” she tells them, then turns back to Tony. “Sorry. I’m just freaking the frack out. The last time he even _tried_ to run from me was when he found out that Odin stole him from his homeworld and lied to him for, oh, over a thousand years, while punishing him for the very same thing he wasn’t telling him. So…,” she raises both hands, mimes scales. 

“You’re worried,” Tony understates. Just a little. A tiny, little smidge. 

“Yes.”

He rubs a hand over his face, leaves a grease stain on his forehead and then nods, “Okay, yeah, I can maybe understand that this is a thing that’s not normal and you’re a hormone bomb waiting to happen and I’m also terrified of you even when you don’t have the crazy eyes and the water melon thing going on, so I will just… I will go and I will fetch your giant, Shakespearean brother-in-law so he can wrangle you and help you find the wayward god of tricks. Okay? Cool? Cool.”

He snaps his fingers once, makes guns and blows on them, nods to himself, pats a nearby server rack in silent apology to JARVIS and then flees.

Buffy closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and quietly promises not to half-orphan her unborn children if it turns out that Loki skipped out on his own. Baby number one steps on her kidney in response and her back muscles spasm. And she needs to pee. Again.

She wants Loki. 

+

Thor is no help.

He poses a lot with his cape fluttering in the rooftop breeze and calls for Heimdall and takes off to bring Loki back except, no dice. Loki’s not in Asgard, Vanaheim, Helheim or even flipping Muspelheim. Thor knows. He checked. His cape is still smoking when he returns, downtrodden like a puppy who lost his favorite stick. 

(Which is actually a more accurate comparison than Loki can ever, _ever_ know.)

Buffy yanks him down by his breast plate to pat him on the head before going to bawl in a tub of ice-cream. She hates everything and most of all herself and how all over the place she is. 

She’s supposed to be a competent, seasoned warrior queen bitch in charge of everything and not… this. She’s technically a princess, was once the Alpha Slayer, the Queen, the oldest of them all, she’s slain gods and dragons, monsters and men and she is not some weak little housewife who sits at home and wrings her hands while her husband is out doing _fuck knows what_!

“He’ll turn back up,” Natasha offers from the kitchen doorway, a paper bag in hand. When Buffy doesn’t try to bite her head off, just gives her a morose look, she steps closer and offers up her sacrifice to the goddess of hormones.

It’s cupcakes. 

Buffy side-eyes the other woman. Miss Rushman is still not her biggest fan, but this is actually nice. Eight cupcakes, with rainbow frosting and sprinkles. One looks like it might be red velvet under all the pastels. 

“I called Coulson. He’s tapping SHIELD. JARVIS is helping. Thor went back out to keep looking. We’ll find him.”

Buffy pulls out one cupcake, bites into it and gets frosting on her nose. Licks it off. Frowns at Nat again. 

Nudges the bag over. “You can have one,” she decrees, magnanimously and licks her fingers to get all the frosting. The babies like it. 

+

They pig out on cupcakes without exchanging another word and Buffy reevaluates her lists of people and decides Natasha goes into the ‘like’ list, now. For being kind.

Maybe someone else wouldn’t appreciate having a bag of pastries thrown at them in silence, but Buffy and Nat are pretty similar, at their cores. Whittled down, maybe. 

So Buffy decides she likes Natasha. The kids agree, doing a little mambo on her bladder to celebrate. 

Eventually, JARVIS pipes up with an update, which isn’t much of one, actually, and Buffy’s barely salvaged mood plummets again. She wants to be out there, looking, but she knows she can’t. Not this time. 

And she _hates_ it. 

Her husband has been gone for four days and she can’t do anything but _sit_ and _wait_. 

Just as she feels a new bout of crying coming on, Bucky swans in with suspiciously perfect timing and wraps an arm around her shoulders. He more or less kidnaps her to his and Steve’s level, where he turns her into a pregnant woman burrito on the couch and then wraps himself along her back and tells her, “Naptime.”

Because apparently formerly brainwashed Soviet assassins are secretly cats. 

If it were anyone else, Buffy would start with the crazy woman routine again, but it’s Bucky. She a) misses him because she spent three months pretty much alone with him just after Loki unfucked his head and he grew on her and b) knows that he doesn’t sleep all that much himself, nightmares, guilt and paranoia keeping him awake. 

So when he kidnaps her for a nap? She shuts up and naps. Even if she doubts she’ll be able to sleep until she lays eyes on her wayward husband again, lying down and trying to relax is probably good for the beans. 

If she keeps going like this, she’ll miscarry or hurt them or do something else to them and look at her, she’s _already_ being a terrible mother, this is why she needs Loki here, this is why he needs to come home, this is why – 

“Buffy,” Buck rumbles into her ear. “Nap.”

She tries. For the kids. 

+

She storms Strange’s place the next morning and orders him to magic her husband back. 

To his credit, he simply puts down his coffee, squints at her and offers, “I can try a tracking spell.”

He does. It fails. He waves a hand in front of his hand to disperse the smoke, coughs twice and promises, “I’ll look up a few things, try something else. I’ll call Tony as soon as I find something.”

He smiles at her, soft and kind and when he’s not being a dick with a goatee, he’s actually an okay guy. Sometimes. So Buffy nods, thanks him, and goes home.

+

Home.

Where her husband is. 

Home, where Loki sits in their living room like nothing is wrong like he hasn’t been gone without a trace for almost five days, like she didn’t think he was – 

“Where the fuck have you been?!” she snarls and at any other time, she might be taken aback by the vicious edge of rage in her own voice, but right now she only takes vindictive pleasure in the way Loki jumps out of his skin and turns to stare at her, wide-eyed. 

“Buffy-,” he starts, but she doesn’t let him, can’t let him, not with the ball of worryfearpanic in her belly dissolving itself instantly and dangerously into anger. She wants to _hurt_ something.

“Do you have any idea how goddamn worried I was? You just up and disappeared, no trace, no note, nothing, nobody knew anything and I couldn’t come after you because I’m pregnant with _your children_ and I was freaking the fuck out you inconsiderate, selfish, idi-,” she stops herself, barely, before she says something unforgiveable. It takes all of her willpower, leaves her shaking and crying _again_ and she hates him for having that power over her and herself for letting him and her babies for making her this stupid and herself for hating either her babies _or_ her husband and it’s a huge, freaking mess and she doesn’t think, just grabs the little death skull pendant around her neck and thinks, _away_. 

She lands in Helheim with a flash and hides her face in her hands. 

+

And hour later finds her curled up in the queen’s private chambers, a blanket wrapped around her and all her limbs curled protectively around her belly. Her babies. Loki’s babies. Loki who is – 

“God, I’m such a terrible person.”

“You reacted badly to a stressful situation,” Hel corrects, gently, from where she’s sitting an arm’s length away, knitting something that looks suspiciously baby-sized. It has little puffy clouds on it. 

“But that’s not me,” Buffy complains, hides her face in her knees and focuses hard to tune into the fluttering heartbeats of her children. It calms her down. At least a little. 

Hel pats her on the ankle. “No, it’s not. Going out and hitting things until the problem’s solved is you, but you can’t do that right now and it compounded what you were already feeling.”

Which… yeah. Buffy is a terrible person. Like she said. 

Hel holds up her knitting. “Should I give the sheep faces, do you think?”

Buffy squints at it. “Probably. I thought they were clouds.”

Hel considers that, then nods just as the door opens and a burly man with golden eyes and pitch black hair steps inside. He grins around a mouthful of jagged fangs and Hel says, “Oh, good, you’re here. I need you to take her with you.”

“What?” Buffy frowns. She likes Helheim. It reminds her of Heaven. The company is better, though. And Hel gave her her own transport charm and everything, so she can come whenever she wants and it’s _nice_.

Her step-daughter gives her a long look. “This is the realm of the dead, Mommy, you can’t stay here. We don’t know what it’ll do to my siblings. Fen’s taking you to his place. You can hide there until you want to face Father.”

Fenrir, still standing in the doorway, nods along before holding out one hand, “Come, Mommy, I’ll make you hot chocolate. Jor’s on standby for snuggles.”

Jor likes wrapping himself around Buffy close enough to hear the babies move. 

Buffy blinks stupidly at them before, before deciding, “I want my kids to grow up like you guys. I love you.”

“And we love you,” Hel responds, immediately. “You make Father happy, and you don’t care that we’re monsters.”

Buffy straightens from under the blankets, kisses Hel on the forehead and lets her step-son lead her out of the land of the dead for snuggles and hot chocolate.

+

She wakes up hours later, a shrunk-for-the-occasion mythical snake wrapped around her baby bump, blanket over both of them, and the original werewolf nowhere in sight. 

Instead, his father is perched on the nearest armchair in Fen’s living room, watching her with dark eyes. 

Buffy cradles Jor’s head to make sure she doesn’t squish him and sits up. “I’m sorry I yelled,” she blurts before Loki can say anything.

He shakes his head. “From what I was told, you were… very worried.”

She snorts. Understatement. “I was losing my freaking mind. As Hel pointed out, I don’t do so well when I can’t punch my problems away. But why didn’t you tell me you were going somewhere? Why didn’t you let me come? You know I’m on your side. You know – “

“That’s the problem,” he interrupts and Buffy feels her insides freeze. Jor tightens his coils around her in comfort, but otherwise pretends to be dead to the world. Smart boy. 

“What?” she croaks, because she can’t, she hasn’t… she doesn’t…

Loki must see what his words are doing to her, because he’s there, suddenly, on his knees in front of her, his hands wrapped around hers, forehead pressed to her stomach, cursing quietly. 

“You keep saying that,” he hurries to explain. “For a century, you’ve said it. You’re on my side. And I love you, more than I have ever loved another, more than I thought myself capable of loving anything or anyone, but you keep saying that and you keep forgetting – I am on your side, too.”

And that… makes no sense, but she can roll with that, pulls one of her hands free to run in through his hair. “I know that, Lokes.”

He makes a frustrated sound. She’s missing his point. “You were so scared that the Allfather would come for our sons. I have never, in all our years, seen you so afraid. You are fierce and terrible and beautiful and you should never be afraid. Never. So I went to fix it because _I am on your side_ , as much as you are on mine. Always.”

He tugs on her ribbon, pulls it taut, lets it go. 

Always.

Buffy swallows around the lump in her throat. “What did you do?”

“I considered, at first, going to Odin himself, making some sort of deal, but I discarded that plan early on. He has never been trustworthy where you and I are concerned, less so when my children are involved. I could not rely on him to keep his word. So I went to those even he bows to, the only beings in this universe even Odin Allfather, Gallow’s God, would not dare defy.”

Jor hisses quietly in surprise.

Buffy gasps. “You went to the Norns.”

Finally, Loki looks up at her. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I made a deal with them.”

“For what?”

He smirks, his hidey smirk, the one he uses to pretend everything’s fine and she drags her hand down his face to wipe it off. He scowls at her, but leaves it alone. “For the price of three favors, to be called in at their discretion, our children are free.”

“Free? What favors? Loki, did you sell your soul, or something?”

“There are stipulations to the favors. They cannot risk my life or my family. They cannot make me a criminal on Asgard. And they called one in right away, which is why I was gone so long. I hoped to be back before you even woke up, I swear to you. But they insisted. As for the rest, they’re free. These and any we might yet have. Their threads are their own, their lives weaving without interference. No god or creature may touch them.”

He smiles and it’s soft and rueful and full of sorrow even as he strokes Jor’s scales gently. “I cannot guarantee that they will not experience pain, but it will not be that of chains and Asgard’s idea of judgement. Their fates are their own.”

Buffy inhales sharply. He… he… Odin won’t touch her babies. He won’t be able to. Vali and Nari’s take won’t come true. Not for her children. Not in this life, this cycle. It won’t. Because their father made it so, because he – 

She kisses him. And then she cries again and then she kisses him and cries and at some point Jor grows a couple of feet and wraps around both of them and Fen’s suddenly there, all arms and puppy growls and her babies will be fine. 

Loki is on her side and their children will be free. 

“Don’t scare me like that again,” she chides, eventually.

“On my life,” he promises, and it’s probably a lie because he’s the god of tricks, but he means it right now and that’s enough for her. One of the beans kicks in agreement and Buffy breathes. 

It’ll be fine. 

They’ll be fine. 

All of them. 

Except, “Let me up, guys, I need to pee.”

+


End file.
